Month: January 2017

Oak Harbor, Ohio has a lot of history. Unfortunately, thanks to shitty decisions by past members of the town, much of the history has been torn down instead of preserved.

Thankfully, someone had the foresight to move an old log cabin from the fairgrounds to its current location, which, ironically, was the location of the old town hall/jail.

Instead of tearing it down, the cabin was moved and preserved for uses such as a cabin for Santa during the holiday season. There isn’t much to it as it’s a single-room cabin, but it’s still nice to see that someone still cares about history, even if there isn’t much back story to it.

Aside from a cabin for Santa, it’s also the site for homecoming/prom pictures, wedding pictures, and even the annual Easter egg hunt in town.

It’s a good reminder of a simpler life, even if it’s nothing more than a simple decoration.

Beautiful and deadly, the Lake Erie islands off the coast of Ohio have seen their fair share of disasters. The Victory Hotel on South Bass Island at Put-in-Bay was once the largest hotel in the nation. But the grand residence was reduced to ashes after a spark quickly became a raging, uncontrollable inferno. Reports of smallpox on Pelee Island resulted in mass hysteria and the quarantine of an entire island. At the Toledo Harbor Lighthouse, one light keeper was frozen in for days with his deceased colleague until he could make a desperate escape. Wendy Koile chronicles the fiercest calamities to shatter the tranquility of these solitary shores.

I completely forgot that a few years ago, the author, Wendy Koile, contacted me out of the blue to get permission for one of my publicly available images to use in her book, Disasters of Ohio’s Lake Erie Islands.

Just a few weeks ago, I came across the email and decided to check out the book to see how the image was used regarding the many topics covered.

Sure enough, as you can see in the above image, my picture was used for a topic on Kelleys Island. Nothing extraordinary about the picture but it’s pretty cool to see something get published.

This is a pretty good book, even if the author misspelled my last name. 🙂

Do you have time for a tale? Sit back, relax, and dive into the interesting and timeless case of Geauga Lake, a tiny family park that started humbly enough, before rocketing overnight into international headlines by combining with a full-sized SeaWorld to create the world’s largest Six Flags.

A gargantuan park of mega-coasters, killer whales, dizzying flat rides, a Batman water ski show, dolphins, log flumes, Hurricane Harbor, and motion simulators for one price, Six Flags Worlds of Adventure was conceptually prepared to become the best theme park on Earth.

I’ll admit: I visited Sea World with my family in the early 90s as a pre-teen, and so I don’t recall much about Geauga Lake. However, I was aware of Six Flags Worlds of Adventure while in college but never visited. I didn’t realize that it was the world’s largest amusement park for a short time. Even worse, I’m ashamed to admit that even as an Ohio citizen, I never knew it closed down just shy of 8 years ago until reading this article.

Sit back, grab a drink, and read the incredible history of Geauga Lake Amusement Park. Side note: I despise the conglomerate known as Cedar Fair Entertainment Company.